My honest take on Jon Bonso's AWS practice test materials
I've been through more AWS certification exams than I care to count, and Jon Bonso's practice tests are one of the more useful tools I've found for actually preparing. They're not perfect, but they're closer to the real exam than most free dumps you'll find floating around forums. The questions follow the same multi-answer, scenario-based format that AWS uses now. That matters more than people realize. What these practice tests actually cover depends on which certification track you grab. The Solutions Architect Professional material is probably the strongest set in his catalog. The Cloud Practitioner content is fine for beginners but kind of surface-level if you already have hands-on experience. The SysOps Administrator review is decent but shorter than I'd like. Here's how I use them. I don't just take the test and move on. I go through every wrong answer and read the explanation thoroughly. Bonso's explanations are where the real value lives. He breaks down why the right answer is right, which is exactly what you need when the real exam throws you a two-part scenario about cross-region replication and cost optimization at the same time. I keep a running doc of the questions I miss and revisit them three days before my exam date.
I ran into a specific problem last year when studying for the Professional exam. A question about Lambda concurrency limits and SQS batch window sizes had an explanation that I felt was internally contradictory. The recommended answer said one thing, but reading between the lines of the explanation pointed elsewhere. I spent about twenty minutes digging through the AWS documentation and confirmed the answer was correct even though the explanation was sloppy. This happens occasionally. My workaround was to verify anything that felt off against the official AWS whitepapers rather than just accepting the explanation at face value. The pricing model has changed over the years. I believe he shifted from a lifetime access structure to a subscription or single-test purchase model at some point. Check the current pricing before you buy because the old information online is everywhere and it's outdated. Here are some things most people miss about using these for real exam prep. First, timing yourself matters. The real AWS exam gives you roughly 90 seconds per question for the Associate level and maybe slightly less for Professional. Bonso's tests let you take as long as you want by default. You need to enable the timer or impose your own limit. If you never practice under time pressure, you'll feel trapped on the actual exam.
Second, don't treat his practice tests as the only resource. I paired Bonso's material with actual hands-on labs in the AWS console. Understanding what S3 Intelligent-Tiering actually does inside the management console takes about an hour to set up and will stick with you longer than memorizing a multiple-choice answer. The practice tests reinforce knowledge. They don't replace building it. Third, there's a trap with retaking the tests. I noticed that the question order changes each time you run a test, which is good. But if you retake the same test five times, you start memorizing answer patterns instead of learning the material. I learned this the hard way during my first attempt at the SA Professional. I scored 89 percent on my last retake and felt confident. The real exam hit me with similar concepts in a different configuration and I barely passed. After that, I stopped reusing the same practice test and moved to different study resources for the final two weeks. The biggest weakness of Bonso's practice tests is that some scenarios are either outdated or oversimplified. AWS changes services constantly. Questions about older EC2 instance types or deprecated S3 storage classes show up in older test versions. Always check the test version date. If it hasn't been updated in the last twelve months, treat it as supplementary material at best.
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For people who need a free alternative to supplement, the official AWS Skill Builder practice exams are worth using alongside Bonso. They're not as detailed in their explanations, but they're authoritative. When Bonso and AWS Skill Builder disagree on an answer, go with AWS Skill Builder every time. I'd estimate that doing Bonso's practice tests seriously, including reviewing explanations and noting weak areas, takes about 40 to 60 hours spread across two to three weeks for an Associate exam. For Professional, plan for 80 to 120 hours minimum because the question depth requires more revision cycles. Anyone claiming they passed the Professional exam after doing nothing but practice tests in under a month is either lying or got extremely lucky. The materials are available through the usual channels. Search for the official Bonso AWS store or the platforms he distributes through. Avoid any third-party site selling what looks like his tests for a fraction of the price. Those are usually stolen or incorrectly transcribed dumps that will actually hurt your preparation.
Bottom line: Bonso's practice tests are solid and I used them for my own exam prep. They're not a magic bullet. They won't teach you AWS. But they will tell you where your knowledge gaps are before the real exam does, and that's genuinely valuable.
